CEO survey shows increased hiring plans

A survey of chief executives nationwide provides new indications that the deepest recession since the Great Depression may be over.

Twenty-nine percent of them are expecting to increase employment in the next six months, compared with just 7 percent a year ago, according to a Business Roundtable survey .

“As the economy recovers and demand returns, we are seeing across-the-board increases in sales, resulting in increased capital expenditures, less job reductions and some employment stabilization,” said Ivan G. Seidenberg, the group’s chairman and the chairman and chief executive of Verizon Communications.

While the increases seem paltry, they reflects the dramatic upswing in the U.S. labor market in the past year. In the throes of the recession, the U.S. hemorrhaged 753,000 jobs in March of last year. But by March of this year, the economy was adding jobs, 162,000, the most in three years, and the third gain this recession, which began in December 2007.

Long Island, which fell into a recession six months later, is still losing jobs, but the pace has slowed.

Long Island had 10,000 fewer jobs in February, compared with February 2009. That loss is down considerably from the 40,000-plus year-to year drops that dominated 2009.